> cache, and instruction pipelines, all internal to the CPU chip. The CPU
> does not normally "slow down" when a cache miss occurs, it idles until
> the data comes from memory, but the clock doesn't vary.
Indeed. Although it doesn't strictly idle right away: it first tries to
keep working on other things, but since memory can easily take about 100
cycles to answer, the CPU pretty quickly runs out of things to do and ends
up idling most of those 100 cycles.
Stefan